Philip K. Dick
Philip K. Dick was born in Chicago in 1928. While attending UC at Berkeley,
he dropped out rather than take ROTC training. He went on to write some 36
novels and 5 short story collections. He won the 1962 Hugo for The Man in the High Castle
and the 1974 John W. Campbell Award for Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said.
He died of heart failure caused by a stroke in 1982.

It's not difficult to get hold of the short stories of Philip K. Dick, if you're of a mind to do so. However, doing so usually
involves unearthing anthologies old and new in which his work has appeared, or going instead to the Complete Works -- four
hefty volumes, which allegedly contain a fair amount of filler in between the killers.

So it should come as no surprise that Gollancz have decided to package a selection of Dick's "greatest hits" into a single
paperback volume -- especially considering the increasing number of films being made from his work, and his gradual absorption
into the canon of "literature proper," whatever that is. This is the sort of book that literature teachers won't feel too
ashamed to issue to a class, for example. But what might that class discover between its covers?

First, I must state my own shortcomings. I'm a relative late-comer to SF, and I came to it through novels first. Hence, much of
the rich history of short-form SF is still unexplored territory for me. Dick is one author whose influence is inescapable,
however; an author continuously referred to and acknowledged, either explicitly in introductions or critical works, or implicitly
with post-modern nods buried in works of fiction. Dick is everywhere in SF, and I have been constantly reminded of him as a
blindspot in my knowledge of the genre.

Hence Human Is? was an ideal book for me to read -- but I am unable to approach in the manner a better-read critic
might do. For example, I cannot comment on the choice of stories, cannot praise inclusions or excoriate omissions. I cannot
even say with certainty how definitive a selection the stories here should be considered to be. Instead, I must take it as it
comes, so to speak.

One comment I feel I am qualified to make, however, is that I'm astonished by the lack of any introduction or analysis in the
collection. None at all -- index, then stories, straight through. While I imagine Gollancz were keen to keep costs down (what
publisher isn't, in this day and age?), surely it wouldn't have cost them too dear to include a few pages from an author
or critic of note, or an explanation of the thinking behind the story selection? But there is no such thing -- which at least
enabled me to approach the book with my mind tabula rasa.

Or so I thought. That's the thing; like I say, Dick is everywhere, saturated into the blood and cells of modern science
fiction and (to an alarming extent) the world beyond the pages of books as well. To come to Dick's work as a truly blank
slate would require you to have arrived on this planet comparatively recently, with a full command of idiomatic American
English, while having never read a novel or seen a modern movie. In other words, to read Dick with no preconceptions would
take a set of preconditions that are alarmingly like the sort of scenarios he peppered his plots with. I'm sorry if that
seems a little circuitous -- that's just the way Dick's work makes you think.

So, stepping back and trying again, what's the first impression a new reader gets of Dick's stories? Well, to be blunt, he was a
terrible writer of prose, at the words-and-sentences level at least. Now, I understand that the prose standard of genre fiction
was not exactly sky-high in Dick's era, but nor was everyone a pay-per-hundred-words hack, either. But it's been said by many
before me, and I have to concede the point -- Dick's prose is dreadful. Clunky clichéd description, wooden
dialogue... critics of the state of the modern genre short story should at least take heart from the fact that the mechanics
of writing are deployed far more effectively by contemporary writers.

However, Human Is? contains some amount of evidence that the ability of modern writers to come up with genuinely innovative
plot ideas is in decline. As mentioned above, I'd read only two of these stories before, and seen films (loosely) based on another
two. But almost invariably I found the plots incredibly familiar, to the extent that I could foretell the denouements after
reading only a third of the tale. This isn't the fault of Dick's writing, though -- it's because his ideas have been raked
over, rehashed, remixed and reused so many times since he wrote the originals.

This is why context is useful (and why I think there should have been at least some short introduction to act as guidance for
someone without any historical knowledge of Dick). Without being aware of the world Dick was writing in, a newcomer might be
forgiven for thinking that he was indeed little more than a pulp-mag hack of the most unoriginal stripe.

But look again; see his works from the 50s, a rare voice in the wilderness decrying the horrible paranoia of the Cold War
and the threat of Mutually Assured Destruction, willing to question the inherent superiority of Western consumerism and
might-makes-right. "The Defenders" (1953) is a work of naked wish-fulfillment for a rapprochement between the warring
superpowers; the indistinguishable autonomous combat robots of "The Second Variety" (1953) demonstrate a nervous what-if to the
otherwise unquestioned notion of technological military superiority being a laudable and safe means to an end; the creepily
prescient "The Mold Of Yancy" (1955), a tale about a gestalt political identity that resonates scarily in our era of
internet-distributed political astroturfing.

Then see his works of the early 60s, prefiguring the hippie intellectual revolution by questioning the hegemony of conformity
and the oppressive mechanics of an Orwellian surveillance state. "The Days Of Perky Pat" (1963) describes the nauseating notion
of a post-apocalyptic civilisation clinging desperately to talismans of the consumer lifestyle it remembers from before the
bombs dropped; "Oh, To Be A Blobel!" (1964), despite its slightly over-egged comedy trappings, is weirdly prescient of the
issues faced by veterans of Vietnam and the wars that have followed it, and the fates of children born between the two sides
of such a conflict, even after it has ended.

And see his later works, questioning the very sanctity of identity, experience and reality itself, pushing at the boundaries
of what is and is not, smudging the line for the thrill of the horrifying implications or playfully straddling it to see how
long he could hold together. This where it seems to the outside observer that the membrane between Dick's fiction and his reality
started to become permeable in both directions. "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale" (1966), so different in all but the
most basic point to the film based upon it, questioning memory and reality and the difference in between them, if any; "The
Electric Ant" (1969), a kind of philosophical horror story that rips up reality and stamps on the bits. These are standard
riffs in modern SF, in the same way that Chuck Berry solos are a knowing nod in modern rock music. What was once innovative
becomes the new bedrock, a foundation for further building, a ladder to the stars.

But what is most surprising is that, as a writer who arguably did the most to introduce post-modern ideas into science fiction
short stories, it is almost impossible for someone with any knowledge about Dick's life to avoid the modernist analytical
approach of projecting the author onto his work. Perhaps it shouldn't be so surprising, and perhaps it is unfair (if not an
outright mistake) -- but it's hard not to read the span of Dick's career as a meta-narrative, a story about Dick himself
and his descent into paranoia and mental illness, a story that mirrors the movement of our society into a situation that
is as rife with contradictions and unrealities as Dick's own work. But therein lies the key to Dick's success -- because,
by writing his own fears, he was writing from the heart as well as the head.

But perhaps this isn't just a critical exercise; perhaps we project Dick onto his work because that's what we're supposed
to do. It has often been remarked that Dick wrote the world we live in now, with its daily paranoia and ubiquitous autonomous
technologies, with its fear of impending global doom and destruction. Perhaps that's because he did. Maybe when I finish
writing this review, I will cease to exist in any tangible fashion for those of you who read it. Maybe I never existed at
all, and my entire life's output has been written by a homeostatic machine buried deep beneath a ruined city ("If There
Were No Benny Cimoli" (1963))...

Paul Raven is a dishevelled library assistant from the south coast of the UK. He likes poetry, science fiction
stories, music with guitars and girls with tattoos. His friends play a game that involves them buying him drinks
and then steering the conversation round to space colonisation or neural prosthetics.
Drop by his web site at the Velcro City Tourist Board